On the far side of the beach where there was a flatter surface, a rowdy group of men and women were crashing about, apparently playing a form of flag football; at the other end of the beach, where an impromptu bar had been set up, they heard one of the barkeeps barking down a handheld radio; and, in the distance, they heard a truck’s beeping signal, which announced it was backing up.

“Booze,” Logan explained briefly when Tina looked at him, her eyebrows arched in a question when they turned their heads in the direction of the beeping sounds of the truck.

Bette chuckled. “Logan, I thought that it was just going to be a week-end barbecue, “with a few friends,”? she asked, as she used the fingers of her free hand to mimic quotation marks.

“I know, I know” he responded with a laugh. “But, then, people began calling me, asking about my plans for the Memorial Day weekend, whether I was going to have any parties just like last year. So before I realized what had happened, I’d hired this party planner to handle all the calls and invites, and who’d then ordered up all the booze, food, valet service, etc. The only thing I’d managed to keep restricted to a list of about 20-25 people was the dinner we just had. But then, starting around half an hour ago, people began arriving for this bonfire, and…”

They each chuckled as they looked around them. The crowd now scattered about, playing flag football, or talking and laughing in groups relaxing near the bonfire or standing closer to the water, like Marissa’s group, or clustered around “cocktail tables” lit with tea lights that had been set up about 25 feet away from the bonfire, had been growing.  They saw more people trickling in, evidently walking over from gatherings in mansions further down the beach, tracing a path along the edge of the water, heading in the direction of Logan’s part of the beach.

Bette smiled at him, questioningly. He nodded and smiled back, “Yeah, neighbors, the neighbors’ neighbors, even people from the opposite side of town that faces the other bay. They’re all joining us … ”

He shrugged. “I’m not the only one doing stuff this weekend, though. Thane’s hosting something tomorrow for lunch, and then a bunch of hedgies will have a dinner thing, in a restaurant about a mile away from here. We could all probably walk over to those places tomorrow…” He paused in mid-sentence, and looked at Bette and Tina in turn, silently asking whether they were joining him.